Talk:John Draper

Death

Considering his profile image on the article says "Draper at Maker Faire Berlin, 2015" he was still alive as of then. There are also numerous articles from as recent as 2020 stating that he is still alive and crowdfunding for his healthcare needs.

Is there any verification of his death? I can't seem to find any proof that he passed away. EricJ2190 —Preceding undated comment was added at 19:49, 25 October 2008 (UTC).

I changed the bit about Joybubbles to past tense, because he died. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.138.28.71 (talk) 02:57, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

NPOV in final paragraph

I removed NPOV statements in the final paragraph. It originally read, "An interesting story about Captain Crunch involves what is possibly the most insane phone-call ever. Draper picked up a public phone, then proceeded to literally "phreak" his call around the world. At no charge, he routed a call through different phone "servers" in countries such as Japan, Russia and England. Once he had set the call to go through nths of countries, he dialed the number of the public phone right next to him. Sure enough, a few minutes later, the phone next to him rang. John spoke into the first phone, and, after quite a few seconds, he heard his own voice very faintly on the other phone. This is just one example of his career in phreaking exploits."

'Possibly the most insane... ever', struck me as highly subjective and too 'slangy'. I also struck 'Sure enough', from the sentence 'sure enough, a few minutes later...' Wisco 08:49, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

I removed the irrelevant link to the ad-filled blog [1]. If this was in fact not irrelevant, my apologies - just add it back. 128.135.108.122 02:52, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Apple II Telephone Interface

This sounds fishy, anyone else care to comment?

Wozniak has said that the reason that the board was never marketed was that he was the only one in the company who liked him and partially due to Draper's arrest and conviction for wire fraud in 1977.

--Blakeops 10:04, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

That can be backed up. Simply listen to the interview from Gnomedex 4.0! That's practically verbatim! http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail215.html

SiennaLizard 17:18, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

The bit about Draper is about 30 minutes in to the recording: "but everyone else at apple didn't like Crunch, only me." I'm going to go ahead and add that link as a reference, although I'm not totally familiar with Wikipedia's reference policy. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.146.130.162 (talk) 21:19, 16 January 2007 (UTC).

Currently almost homeless?

See http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB116863379291775523-_EQCu93LyjSommsN6J7qiCozuu8_20070122.html?mod=blogs —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 62.174.117.184 (talk) 23:12, 17 January 2007 (UTC).

source of the captain crunch info

In the bonus features of the Sneakers DVD, John mentions that the name of his friend who mentioned the whistle to him is "Sid." Do we have a citation that Joe is his friend's name? Cheers, Debivort 03:57, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

ADAM in Fl needs captian Crunch bad

is crunch there? adam in fl needs ur help 904 721 0445/adammurray@bellsouth.net. please call —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.153.253.196 (talk) 03:11, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Kandice??

What does Kandice have to do with him... is this sentence in the article correct??

"Currently he writes computer security software, is senior developer of KanTalk![4] VoIP software for teen singer/software model Kandice Melonakos,[5] and host of an internet show, Crunch TV."

- Regards, Nino —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.113.90.35 (talk) 09:50, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Not introduced to Phreaking by JoyBubbles but by another blind kid "Dennie"

"Dennie told me he was blind and wanted to be a DJ, and was also interested in phones. I thought that someone interested in phones was a tad wacky, but Dennie gave me a special number to call and I would be connected to a party line where up to 8 people can be on the line at once. I asked for Dennie's phone number before hanging up and trying the "Conference" line.

"I called it, and just listened to it for a while without saying anything, just to hear what's going on. I caught words like "Loop round", "Tandem" and a whole bunch of other lingo that could have been Greek as far as I know at that time. I wrote some of these words down, and a note to ask Dennie what they all mean. .....

"He said it was a "loop around" and proceeded to tell me how it works. It essentially is used to measure line loss and works like this.... One calls 264-0044 and gets a tone, interrupted every 20 seconds or so. This tone is measured in Decibels by special equipment. Then, one calls the "Other side" of the loop, often called the "Silent side". In this case, it was 264-0045. The tone goes away, and both people can talk to each other."suck_in

"My first visit

So, after work, I locate Dennie's house, and ring the door bell. His father answers the door, I ask for Dennie, and he shows me to his room. I enter into a dark room. Dennie says "Oh!! I'm sorry, you're not a blink!" and turns on the light.

Dennie, it turns out was just a teenage kid. Yet from his voice, it sounded like he was in his 30's.Also in this room were 3 other nerd like kids. One rather short dude named Jimmy, who has perfect pitch and plays an organ really well."My First Visit (with the Blind Kids) this whole section needs to be re-written.Godspeed John Glenn! Will 22:15, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Sarcastic wording

Gee, I'm hurt. A few, admittedly creative, words of mine were eliminated in this IP edit because they were "Sarcastic wording." I said that Draper had neglected minor details like his health for decades. That was not intended as a slam, but instead a truthful reflection of Draper's personality. There are several, sourced instances discussing his dental neglect, sometimes even basic hygiene that have been similarly eliminated from this article. I contend they should be there, not because people need to know Draper smells or has bad teeth or the like, but that it is a unique trait. He is so focused on the technical things that has made him famous that he doesn't think about the mundane things that clog our mortal mind, like eating, until they become a serious problem. Similarly, he was so focused on experimenting and solving technical questions with the phone system, that he neglected the principle of legal or illegal. So I'm throwing this open to discussion. How to convey this personality trait? Trackinfo (talk) 05:44, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

I would say don't. We say that he's been living out of a vehicle by choice for a while, and some lifestyle compromises are implicit in that. There's no excuse for using that as a platform to say that he's odorous or unhygenic, because that's not particularly encyclopedic information. We don't cover the fact that Bill Clinton sometimes sweats a lot in his article, for instance, even though you can find sources out there that cover this. The reason is the same: any mention of it at all is undue weight, and also almost certainly non-neutral even if you take pains to phrase it otherwise. — Gavia immer (talk) 10:04, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Funds solicitation

I trimmed down the section "Current medical situation", which was largely being used as a forum to solicit funds for Draper. I removed 1) the request for money; 2) the information about trapped nerve syndrome, which is best served by the existing wikilink; and 3) the unsourced statement that "Draper has been known to neglect his personal health for decades," which is not acceptable in a BLP article unless reliably sourced. Really, the only thing appropriate to retain here is the sourced statement of his current medical condition. TJRC (talk) 19:38, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Vandalism

There seems to be some vandalism going on to the page at the moment. People are changing instances of Draper to Derper. Reddit is currently linking to the article which is the likely cause of the vandalism influx. Thank you for protecting the page for the time being. Access Time (talk) 18:54, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Esquire article: Who is G---- T-----?

Salon just republished Ron Rosenbaum's Esquire article, which introduces Captain Cruch as "G---- T----, his real name." I'm wondering what sort of alias G.T. was for John Draper, or if this is perhaps a doubly anonymous reference in the article. BrianWilloughby (talk) 10:26, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Bunch of external links

I moved these from the article's EL section. We can use them for sources perhaps but they do not belong in the article otherwise.

• Rhoads, Chris (2007-01-13), The Twilight Years of Cap’n Crunch, Wall Street Journal.
• Blue Box, Esquire, October 1971.
• Digitales Woodstock (in German), Der Spiegel, 1997-08-18, p. 166.
• Involvement with Bill SF and BART Card duplication, Phrack Magazine.
• Captain Crunch, Rotten Library.
• Robson, Gary D, The Origins of Phreaking, Blacklisted! 411.
• Interview with John Draper, Tom Barbalet, 1995.
• Interview with John Draper (MP3), UK Hacker Voice Radio, January 2006.
• John Draper's work at Autodesk and BART Card duplication, Tom Barbalet/Digibarn, May 2006.
• "The_History_Of_Hacking_Documentary", Discovery Channel. Interview with John Draper.
• Captain Crunch on Apple — An interview with John Draper, Stories of Apple.
• Triangulation 13: John "Capn Crunch" Draper, Part 1, TWiT.tv, 2011-05-05. John Draper is interviewed by Leo Laporte and Tom Merrit.
• Triangulation 25: John "Capn Crunch" Draper, Part 2, TWiT.tv, 2011-09-21. John Draper is interviewed by Leo Laporte and Tom Merrit.
• Phone Phreak Captain Crunch Rare Interview from '78, JoeTrip, 1978-04-02. John Draper is interviewed by Joe Tripician.
• History of Phone Phreaking Tour 2012 Part II, Campus Party 2012, 2012-08-26. John Draper alias Captain Crunch or JD.CrunchMan

Jojalozzo 03:45, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Some personal anecdotes

I'm completely new to contributing to Wikipedia, and I encourage the more experienced to just delete this if inappropriate. In the early 80's I met John at an early computer show. He was very friendly. We we struck up a conversation and quickly found some common ground, we'd both been screwed by a computer company we'd worked for. He claimed that most of the money he made from EasyWriter was from the Apple product. He had ill feelings toward the IBM deal he made. Later we met a couple of times. He showed me his expertise with the Fourth language, which is what EasyWriter was built with. He was extremely creative and competent at programming, though he seemed mostly self taught. I had never heard of Capt'n Crunch. A friend of mine who was a fan of the 2600 newsletter brought me up to speed. When I mentioned Capt'n Crunch, he was very evasive. He clearly wanted to leave that period in his life behind. No doubt his prison experience was part of this.

I last saw him at an apartment he was living in near the western entrance to the Caldecott tunnel, I think in Oakland CA. I saw the article mentioned Mercedes there. I recall from that visit that at that time he was very interested in his physical health. He was very muscular and I recall at one point when he started talking crazy, that I had some fear for my life. After showing me that he could do many pushups, he explained that in prison he had been beaten to the point where his back was broken. He also told me about how efficient he became in programming there because of his limited access to the computer. Some of his behavior was rather colorful. I recall him losing something and him ranting that his apartment was full of black holes that things fell into. This behavior was quite manic. He go from calmness to extreme agitation very quickly. He had a number of friends visiting at the apartment while I was there. They were more like techie groupies than friends. At one point he became verbally abusive to one of them. This dissuaded me from contacting him again as I didn't want to be the target of that kind of random anger.

I don't mind being a source for any of my personal experiences.

198.144.201.136 (talk) 08:13, 5 May 2014 (UTC)(Mitchell Schoenbrun)

• Point of order, the language is named forth, not fourth.

• No one has offered a policy-based comment on your offer of personal anecdotes... Okay, while interesting, your anecdotes, or my anecdotes, definitely don't belong in article space. Similar comments, published, or uttered in an interview, in a reliable source, may merit coverage here. Some contributors would shut down even the discussion of anecdotes in the Talk namespace, or other fora, since those are supposed to be used to build the encyclopedia, and anecdotes that can't be included in article space, don't measure up.

• I too met Draper, in 1979, where I learned that "executing a 9a" was his term for getting high, because 9a was the numeric representation for the instruction that tested the high order bit for his favourite microprocessor - and its mnemonic opcode was "get hi". Geo Swan (talk) 01:41, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

Allegations

I have removed the "Allegations" section again. The section was added by a single purpose account (User:Jodiefoster) which has made no other edits. The information was sourced to a couple of forum postings on Slashdot, a CNN article which did not mention any such allegations, and various Twitter posts. None of this comes close to meeting the requirements of sourcing for such a severe WP:BLPCRIME issue. I accept that feelings apparently run high regarding this section, but until proper sources are introduced - on this talkpage - this material has no place in the article. Yunshui ^雲_水 14:57, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

The "Allegations" section sourced several well-known and respected people making accusations on Twitter and Medium (namely Steve Manzuik, Violet Blue, and the Grugq). Please define "proper sources" for me if the published accusations of witnesses does not count. There are sexual assault allegations without convictions that have entire Wiki pages dedicated to the topic, for example Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse allegations. The same rules allowance apply here, ie noting the accusation without stating the incident as fact. Also- I've seen the talk pages of the accounts of a self-described "team" of people arguing the legal issues, but noting the fact that such allegations exist is never defamation. Wikipedia should not cower to people working to silence the fact that these allegations exist. Baldr83 (talk) 07:16, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

See WP:TWITTER, point #2, for the reason we cannot use other people's tweets as a source in this instance. If a few reliable news outlets were to publish articles about these allegations, as was the case with Harvey Weinstein, then a case could be made for including the section. Without such sources, however, it has no place in the article; we are not a supermarket tabloid. Yunshui ^雲_水 09:23, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

This still doesn't merit the removal of the CNN article which matches what the subsection was about. The same WP:TWITTER, point #2 allows for an easy rewriting of that section to include only first person accounts. I can do this if added back. Jodiefoster (talk) 19:19, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

If you think that's what WP:TWITTER says then I can only suggest that you go back and re-read it - it says the exact opposite; it specifically states that we may not use Twitter statements about third parties. Under that policy, the only Twitter account that could legitimately be used in this article is Draper's own account, and even that would be limited in what it could be used for. The CNN article contains absolutely no mention of any such allegations; it mentions that he offers "body tune-up" sessions, which you appear to be twisting to further your position. You are massively misrepresenting the sources and, given that your only purpose on Wikipedia appears to be to libel the subject of the article, I would posit that your contributions to this discussion are neither welcome nor likely to be given any credence by the editing community. Yunshui ^雲_水 20:31, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

The Allegations of inappropriate sexual behavior section has now been added citing mainstream news reports from BuzzFeed News and Ars Technica, and on-the-record statements about Draper's past behavior by the University of Pennsylvania professor Matt Blaze, in a series of public statements on Twitter. It's not longer legitimate to argue that these allegations should remain "out" of the article because there are real people making specific claims in an on-the-record fashion. ahess247 (talk) 14:42, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

No, I agree. The content added in the last couple of days has been suitably cited (the Buzzfeed article wasn't published when I removed the section previously), and I have no problem with its inclusion in the article. I still have serious reservations about the use of Matt Blaze's Twitter comments, which are not a suitable source per WP:TWITTER, however. Yunshui ^雲_水 14:54, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

The Twitter stream is a public comment by a noted and Twitter-verified person on a subject in the news. There's no reasonable doubt as to Matt's identity. I think it's perfectly fine to use. It's no different than if he told the story to a reporter doing a follow-up story. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ahess247 (talk • contribs) 15:28, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Our policy, which I have linked to at least twice in the comments above, is extremely clear: Twitter (and other self-published sources may be used on Wikipedia as sources of information about the poster as long as they do not contain claims about third parties. This usage does not fall within that policy; these tweets do contain claims (controversial ones at that) about at third party (Draper), and therefore are not being used appropriately. It is very different to telling the story to a reporter; the reporter would then be expected to fact-check and compose the story appropriately, and it would go past a team of editors before being released for publication. You may think it's perfectly fine to use, but, to be frank, we don't care what you think; we care about what the policy says - and the policy says this is not allowed. Yunshui ^雲_水 15:18, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

Okay. So Blaze's comments on Twitter have now been reported in the media, specifically the new Daily Dot interview. That makes them fair game. I will simply refer to that and not the Tweets themselves. ahess247 (talk) 15:22, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

That, by contrast, will hear no objection from me. Many thanks. Yunshui ^雲_水 16:06, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

More sexual assault allegations have arisen. I'll add some material to the current section in the next 12 hours or so.

See https://www.the-parallax.com/2017/11/22/new-sexual-assault-allegations-john-draper/ ahess247 (talk) 00:52, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

I have a few points to raise here, mainly directed at Yunshui. Yunshui, I respect the high moral standards you exhibited in this talk page section. However, I feel it might be good to point out a few things that may have been overlooked.

Firstly, Yunshui, you commented that wikipedia is “not a supermarket tabloid” after Baldr83 and jodiefoster included a reference to a non verifiable twitter feed with details of Matt Blaze’s allegation, without him being “on the record”. I would argue that ahess247 adding that the Daily Dot reporting on Mr Blaze’s claims on social media without Mr Blaze actually being interviewed by the Daily Dot is not technically on the record, and Wikipedia then repeating them is only one step away from Wikipedia reporting said twitter feed. So where does that leave the integrity of Wikipedia?

Secondly. I understand that the page previously contained non verifiable positive or self promoting claims and parts read like JD’s bio, but surely removing them was enough. With the level of details the allegations article now goes into, it seems ridiculous that a living bio of someone now provides an equal level of details to negative hearsay as it does to proven and citable facts. This is not RationalWiki.

Thirdly, when the allegations began there was a definite smear campaign going on on this page, where non citable allegations were being added and deleted daily. (user jodiefoster being mentioned by you in the history as a likely fake account merely created to add to the smears). Given the connection between a few of the journalists who followed up on the original Buzzfeed article, I would suggest that to an extent the page is being converted from a fair and balanced living bio to an excuse to belittle, smear and negate contribution, with absolutely no proof. The removal of citable mentions in the Popular Culture section after extensive addition to the Allegations section being an example.

Fourthly. At what point in time can a paragraph be added to the allegations section, saying that since the allegations were made, no actual evidence has been brought forward, and no official reports have been made? This seems only fair. Thank you. Preceding comment added by Aliasubik 14:02, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

• @Yunshui: I have removed a couple of unsourced paras; but I question whether what remains (Parallax, Daily Dt, Buzzfeed) are really WP:RS for such extreme and (as yet) unproven allegations as these? —SerialNumber54129^{...speculates} 09:33, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

There are currently ongoing debates in several places on Wikipedia about the merits of Buzzfeed and similar sites as sources. On the one hand, they do meet the basic requirements that we've always used for sources; they are written by professional journalists, they are edited by professional editorial staff, and they do at least rudimentary fact-checking. On the other hand, those requirements were laid down before many of these organs even existed. Whether our requirements for sources need to by upgraded (IMHO they probably do) is another debate entirely... In this specific case, the allegations are a matter of public record, and have been commented on by multiple media outlets which have at least the semblance of reliable sources; as long as we are clear that these are unproven allegations I believe we're on solid ground policy-wise (although caution is needed to avoid giving undue weight; I for one would prefer to see the mention in the lead section removed or at least severely truncated). Yunshui ^雲_水 12:44, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

Thank you Yunshui. To continue this discussion: I have also removed the first paragraph, since it cites another Buzzfeed article with a highly misleading title and sub heading, where instead of saying "alleged behaviour", it is written as a statement of fact. Without cite the paragraph is meaningless. I also had to do a couple of minor clean-ups to keep continuity after removing first paragraph. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aliasubik (talk • contribs) 17:08, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

The mention in the lead paragraph should stay in is that it's the primary reason that anyone is interested to know who he is in 2018. The allegations in Buzzfeed and Parallax include a mix of people who have gone on the record -- in some cases by name -- to accuse JD of this conduct. Buzzfeed is the professional news organization that is partially owned by NBC News, and employes about 1,500 people, about half of which are journalists. JD has filed no legal actions alleging libel or slander. That me says a great deal about the overall strength of the reporting. Technically the accusers -- again some of them have been named in these reports -- are no different than Anita Hill, the woman who accussed Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment ahead of his confirmation hearing. By your standard here, Anita Hill wouldn't be mentioned in the Clarence Thomas article, but she clearly is because to leave her out would be preposterous. And to be clear: I'm not focused only on this matter in the article. I've systematically gone back through the sources and documented the original sources for many of the factual claims in this article concerning JD's technical career. (See my edits.) Many that were in the article prior to late 2017 simply did not stand up to sourcing checks. To that end, I've been rigorous in tracking down the primary sources and correcting both the article text and the citations throughout. ahess247 (talk) 19:26, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

I've re-edited this. It's still only three paragraphs. Buzzfeed story is re-introduced, and the factual basis for the section focuses more on the fact that JD has been banned from DefCon, ToorCon and HOPE, which is beyond dispute, and less on the basis for the allegations that led to the bans. However the on-the-record allgations by Matt Blaze and Phil Lapsley remain, because they're on-the-record and by notable people with their own Wikipedia articles. ahess247 (talk) 00:12, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

For what it's worth, this remains allegation. There are rights of the accused, which prohibit pillory and libel. It doesn't matter how many people allege a thing until it's proven no matter what the current zeitgeist about the thing is. Let's not enable an accusation bias here any more than we already have.

I've restored the sentence about the allegations in the lead paragraph. The allegations and bans from the cons are literally the only reason he's been notable for the last decade. The information is correctly sourced and parsed, so there's no reason to take it out. ahess247 (talk) 23:43, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

About the exhaustive list of software development projects

I've removed the lengthy list of software development projects that JD has allegedly worked on for two reasons. First, most lack citations of any kind, and should, therefore, remain out until citations can be added. Second, many are obscure and not useful to a general reader, which is what Wikipedia is created for. Finally, this isn't JD's resume. If it's important to know every single software project he's worked on, he can list them all on his LinkedIn profile. ahess247 (talk) 20:17, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

Evaluating JD's claims about himself versus those verified by others

I think there's a strong case to take some of JD's claims about himself and the relative importance and/or success of the work he has done with some serious salt. When a source cited in the article is based on an interview with JD himself making claims about himself, those claims need to be carefully scrutinized before being treated as reliable because he has an apparent tendency to overstate things about himself. I think only claims verified by secondary sources, should be included. That means if a reporter or writer interviewed JD and then interviewed someone else with knowledge of the claim being made, and confirms it, it's considered reliable. JD cannot be treated as a reliable source about his work and impact. ahess247 (talk) 18:43, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

External links modified

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Edits taking place without history

Some edits have been done on the sexual allegations section, and those edits are not appearing in the history. ahess247 (talk) 14:31, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

About the allegations against JD

The current section is inadequate and incomplete. The allegations first appeared in Buzzfeed, and that should be the first and primary basis for the reference to these claims. They were journalistically vetted and reported, and then publicly addressed by JD in a follow up interview. Additionally, the public, on-the-record allegations by Matt Blaze, which were made in a media interview should be included, and it should be pointed out that JD has specifically not responded to those allegations despite having been directly and specifically asked about them. I will rewrite this section shortly. ahess247 (talk) 16:19, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

===New edit on this is complete.=== ahess247 (talk) 15:28, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

He was on SF-RAVES in 1995

The hub of "raving" (house music events of electronic dance music) was the e-mail mailing list "SF-RAVES" in the 1990s. Everything in the world of raves in the San Francisco Bay Area, was discussed and arranged there. This was depicted in the docudrama film "Groove" (2000). The list was hosted off the hyperreal.org web site, which last I checked, was still an archive.

John was an active member of the list, and was a fan of the "Goa" style of dance music, which was the music created on the India beach town of Goa, which previously had a large hippie community, which then adopted electronic music and combined it with LSD on the beach. I remember John saying either that he had previously gone to Goa for these events, OR was planning to go soon. But he was knowledgeable in that genre ("Goa" style), and the popular artists/DJs etc.

He may have used "Captain Crunch" or some variation thereof, as his handle. But anyone interested should be able to find his posts in the archive. (I don't remember anything sexual, although the rave scene was very "free" in that respect.)

I remember all this, because in 1975, I was introduced to him by a mutual friend, while we were hanging out on the main drag in Palo Alto, and he went to the nearest pay phone and demonstrated the use of the "Captain Crunch" whistle. So, it was interesting to see him twenty years later on SF-RAVES.

I mention all this, because the biographical information has nothing from this period (early-to-mid-90s), but I haven't added it directly, because I don't have the time to look for verification in the archives.

Wikipedia needs an "unverified but uncontested" information capability - the same way that Yelp has a link on pages that say "click here for reviews that we do not recommend" with a big disclaimer.

I lived in Hollywood and knew many celebrities personally, but there are no "references", so I cannot post what I know, and that sort of thing is all going to be lost soon (which is why I post some of it to Talk pages - at least this one can be verified.)162.205.217.211 (talk) 03:16, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

The way to avoid your personal knowledge being "lost soon", is not to post it to talk pages, but to find reputable authors who are writing books or other publications about relevant topics, and tell them what you know. Your knowledge will then appear in their publications, and their publications are then potential sources for Wikipedia. The other alternative is to become a reputable author yourself.

Posting recollections on talk pages is just so much tears in the rain -- it too will be (effectively) lost. MPS1992 (talk) 15:07, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

Most of what you describe has three strikes against it: It's unverifiable, unhelpful to the article, and also uninteresting. ahess247 (talk) 20:44, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Anarchist?

The article doesn't mention his politics. Abbie Hoffman said this about him in 1980:

The great phone phreak by far was (and still is!) the legendary John Draper. ... He was a dedicated anarchist.
— Soon to be a Major Motion Picture, p. 239

But I'd want a better source—any recommendations? (not watching, please {{ping}}) czar 01:05, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

Lots of hacker/phreaker types claim they're anarchists. That's not all that unique. I'd be looking for documented statements and actions showing it was a meaningful aspect of his life before including it, not just an off-hand comment by Abbie Hoffman. Is there such a section in that little biography book written by his friend from a couple years ago? ahess247 (talk) 17:05, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

TAP magazine

I’m almost certain that he was the publisher of TAP, which was the first magazine or newsletter covering hacking and phone phreaking. I’d add it to the article but I am not finding any evidence online. 2601:642:4A80:E6F0:415C:EC4B:2A29:5354 (talk) 13:48, 16 July 2022 (UTC)

I don't think so. The main editor of TAP that people remember is Richard Cheshire aka Cheshire Catalyst. Readers were familiar with Crunch and there was interest in his prosecution and ads to support his criminal defense. I don't think he was ever an editor though. ahess247 (talk) 16:37, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

As I thought, Abbie Hoffman and Al Bell were the original founders. Cheshire took over later.

See reference in Youth International Party article: In June 1971 Abbie Hoffman and Al Bell started the pioneer phreak magazine The Youth International Party Line (YIPL). Later, the name was changed to TAP for Technological American Party or Technological Assistance Program.

ahess247 (talk) 18:19, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

AT&T long lines

"AT&T long lines" here is incorrectly listed as the same thing as a POTS line. That is incorrect: "AT&T Long Lines" was an important part of AT&T's long distance service. As one citation See https://personal.garrettfuller.org/blog/2018/01/19/att-long-lines-a-forgotten-system/ (Not saying that article is perfect, but it gives the idea). This is important because the Bluebox did not affect the line from the phone to the central-office, but instead it was the connection from the central office over a long-distance call that it affected.

Sorry, I don't know how to properly edit here; hoping someone else can correct this in the proper way. Dec5622 (talk) 04:00, 22 February 2024 (UTC)